“I wouldn’t come any closer,” he said. “It’s quite ghastly.”
“I think the damage has been done already,” Skye replied, looking past the doctor’s portly figure. He gagged as the cloying smell of putrefied flesh reached them. Overfine abruptly turned aside and was violently sick in the eelgrass growing at the foot of the cliff.
True to form, Adrienne, black mambo eyes glowing with excitement, brushed past Sir George and walked over to where the bodies were splayed out on the sand and squatted beside them.
Sir George stood aside, muttering, “Well, I did my best to warn you.” He fell into step beside Skye. “Welcome back, Skye. It’s good to have you back on the island.” Skye, struggling to hold back the gorge rising in his throat, nodded his thanks. Up close, he smelt the usual mixture of whisky and peppermint on the surgeon’s breath.
The three bodies were little more than skeletons, and two were missing a leg. Looking down at them, Sir George said, “They must have gotten hung up on the reef. The crabs have almost stripped them clean. But the sharks got them first. Look at this.” He pointed to a serrated wound on a strip of flesh that still clung to the chest of one of the bodies. “She’s a female,” he added, “although you might not know it at first.”
Skye nodded mutely. The initial shock had passed and he could look at the mutilated remains without revulsion. He leaned over to inspect the wound that Sir George was pointing out. Straightening up, he asked, “Where’s Edwina? Is she still with the clinic?”
“Of course she is. I couldn’t function without her invaluable assistance.” That was true enough, thought Skye as Sir George continued, “Today is her day off, and she flew down to Grenada to see some relatives.” Calling out to the policewoman who had been standing guard on top of the cliff, he said, “There’s nothing more to be done here, Constable. If you agree, we should remove the bodies.”
Constable Phillips came down to join them. As always, she eyed Adrienne with suspicion. She said she would contact Mr. Armbruster once more and he would kindly radio the message to the authorities in Kingstown.
“There’s a body bag in the ambulance,” said Sir George. “Unfortunately, I only have one, but it should hold what’s left of this lot.”
“I’ll get it, Sir George.” Overfine, eager to make amends for what he thought had been a display of weakness, volunteered.
Sir George smiled approvingly, handed him the keys and told him where to find the body bag.
There was no way the portly, sixtyish doctor could handle the cadavers by himself. Swallowing hard, Skye took hold of the largest one, supporting the shoulder blades with one hand and holding the skull with the other. Walking backwards, gripping the pelvis and the one remaining leg, Sir George tripped and fell down on the sand. Wordlessly, Overfine took his place. As he and Overfine were laying the smallest cadaver on top of the other two, Skye bent down for a closer look. A pale white piece of gristle was still attached to the rear of the ribcage. Beckoning Sir George over, he said, “Look at that cut. That doesn’t look like a shark bite to me.”
The surgeon smiled patiently. “I can see why you might think that, Skye. It does look like a sharp and clean line. But no, I wouldn’t say surgical incision. I know them well, as you know.”
There was a bad moment when the body bag refused to close. “Press down on them a bit,” said Sir George. “If need be, I can sort them out later.”
The body bag had handles and Constable Phillips helped them carry it up to the ambulance. It was disturbingly light.
“You will keep the remains under lock and key, Sir George?” said Constable Phillips with a meaningful glance at Adrienne.
“Of course. When will the authorities collect them?”
“In the morning.”
“We better go back down and wash our hands off in the sea,” Skye said to Overfine.
“I can do better than that.” Sir George reached into his medical bag and took out a plastic vial. “Use this. It’s a mild disinfectant. That was quite a homecoming, Skye,” he went on as the three of them rubbed the disinfectant on their hands. “I’m very grateful to you and Overfine.”
“This is bound to keep people from swimming in the ocean. They’ll be thinking of Jaws all over again.”
“Not after I put out the word that the attack took place hundreds of miles from here. Most likely between Haiti and the U.S. mainland. There’s no cause for alarm.”
Word about the bodies that had washed ashore spread. As the little cavalcade of jeeps with its gruesome cargo drove away from the beach, they encountered jeeps coming in the opposite direction. “They’re too late,” Skye said to Overfine. When they dropped Adrienne off at the hotel, guests were clustered on the front lawn, talking excitedly among themselves.
As usual, a smooth-billed ani was perched on the stone wall by the school. Skye smiled as he remembered how thrilled Jocelyn had been when she finally identified the strange-looking bird with its glossy black plumage and large, parrot-like beak. She had refused to let him tell her what it was, insisting on tracking it down herself. The two ladies who ran the vegetable stand under a huge, fern-like jacaranda tree were doing a brisk business and Overfine frowned in concentration as he steered around the parked vehicles. Traffic on the island drove on the left in the English fashion, although all the jeeps were left-hand drive, which made things a little awkward. Most of the shoppers were staff from the villas; some of them wore T-shirts bearing the name of the villas they worked for. Overfine had once hinted that he wouldn’t mind wearing a T-shirt like that, but neither Skye nor Jocelyn had cared for the idea. Instead, Jocelyn designed a neat little logo of a green frog. Overfine wore it on his shirts with great pride.
“How were the last guests? The ones who just left,” asked Skye. Like most villa owners, he rented out Whistling Frog during the tourist season when he was not in residence himself. Whistling Frog, which was one of the smaller villas, was also one of the most popular, and rented for more money in a week than a New York apartment in a month. That meant Skye could own and run the villa virtually free of cost. For the past two years, Whistling Frog had been rented out for the entire season.
“They be good tippers,” Overfine muttered, his tone making it clear that that was the only thing that could be said in their favour. “You know they be two men?” he asked as he geared down for the road that led up to the large villas perched high in the hills. Whistling Frog was about a third of the way up. It overlooked the airstrip, a feature that had done much to sell Skye on it.
Skye shook his head. “I had no idea. The Company looks after renting the place. My God,” he exclaimed as he suddenly thought of Agatha, his fanatically religious cook. “How did Agatha take it?”
“She very vexed. She make them sleep in different rooms.”
“The hell she did!” Skye grinned to himself; he could picture the formidable Agatha terrorizing the two hapless guests into doing what she thought was proper. As they approached the island’s riding stable, he asked Overfine to pull up. Elizabeth Mallory, who managed the stable on behalf of the Manchineel Company, was watching as her groom, a Rastafarian complete with wool cap and dreadlocks, led a small group of inexperienced riders out through the gate. Her full breasts moved underneath her thin cotton shirt as she dogtrotted across the paddock to greet Skye. Elizabeth was a small, blond Englishwoman with a slender waist and astonishing breasts. Skye sometimes wondered if they had been augmented. Augmented or not, he was acutely conscious of them as she gave him a welcoming hug. “It’s so good to have you back,” she said a little breathlessly. “I was beginning to think we had lost you.”
Skye gave her a reassuring squeeze, but said nothing. He didn’t know the answer to that himself. Not yet. He dropped his arms